In a business climate where only the best companies survive and thrive, one thing is clear: You must avoid the stupid stuff. You must eliminate the things that leave customers and employees scratching their heads, frustrated, and mystified.

The problem is that every company, no matter what size, battles to some degree a central tension: people with ideas on how to make things better and hidden obstacles that keep those positive changes from actually happening.

In his recent book How Excellent Companies Avoid Dumb Things (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), Neil Smith distills down what he’s learned by working in exemplary companies into a list of the key barriers that are holding back even the world’s best organizations. According to Smith, the following eight things are the typical barriers to desirable attributes of growth, efficiency, simplicity, and profitability.

1. Avoiding controversy. Controversial ideas exist and are left unresolved because dealing with them would cause too much disruption. Politics, personalities, alliances, and appearances all contribute to making ideas controversial.

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